Conferences

Language is (at least to some extent) culture-specific. It serves as a means to carry over personally or collectively held representations of basically all phenomena related to one’s life. One major challenge in international survey research is to ensure the equivalence of translated survey instruments (e.g., reducing its cultural connotations) without compromising on their validity and reliability. In addition to intrinsic differences in language, other aspects of culture (e.g., differences in the context in which language is used and/or structural differences causing objects/entities to be non-equivalent) may also jeopardize the validity and reliability of cross-cultural comparisons (see, for instance, Smith, 2003).
In this study, we examine empirically the extent to which (high) equivalence of survey instruments to measure human values (Schwartz 1992) can be established across cultures sharing the same language as opposed to cultures having a different language. Our examination made use of a short (i.e., 21-item) survey instrument to measure Schwartz’ human values (as examined in Davidov et al., 2008, and Davidov 2008) based on data from the European Social Survey (rounds I and II).

References:

Davidov, E. (2008). A cross-country and cross-time comparison of the human values measurements with the second round of the European Social Survey. Survey Research Methods, 2(1), 33-46.
Davidov, E., P. Schmidt, and S. H. Schwartz (2008). Bringing Values Back In: The adequacy of the European Social Survey to measure values in 20 countries. Public Opinion Quarterly, 72(3), 420-445.
Schwartz, S. H. (1992). Universals in the Content and Structure of Values: Theoretical Advances and Empirical Tests in 20 Countries. Advances in Experimental Social Psychology 25, 1-65.
Smith, T. W. (2003). Developing comparable questions in cross-national surveys. In J. A. Harkness, F. J. R. Van de Vijver, and P. Ph. Mohler (Eds.), Cross-cultural survey methods. NJ: Wiley.